About Us - History

EDIFICE is a forum for companies in the Electronics Industry to develop and agree guidelines and recommendations on the implementation of e-business standards. The forum was originally formed in 1986 around the implementation of the EDI standard EDIFACT. In recent years the scope has extended to the new technologies for inter-enterprise e-business that became available with wide adoption of the Internet. This broadening of the scope was reflected in an adaptation of the acronym ‘EDIFICE’, which is now interpreted as ‘Standardised Electronic Commerce forum for companies with interests in Computing, Electronics and Telecommunication’.

EDIFICE is a European organisation. Its formation was encouraged and sponsored by the European Union as part of their efforts to promote EDI implementations in Europe. But it has a global vision; many of the member companies are global multinationals, some with headquarters in Europe and others with important operations in Europe but having their headquarters on other continents. The membership includes manufacturers of semiconductors and other electronic components and their primary customers, being manufacturers of communications products, computers and consumer electronics, distributors of semiconductors and contract equipment manufacturers. 

The early work of EDIFICE was focused on the provision of guidelines for the implementation of EDIFACT messages for implementation in the specific inter-enterprise business processes used in the sector. EDIFICE developed an approach to documenting EDIFICE message implementation guides that provided precise guidelines clearly aligned with specific business requirements. 

Extensive work was also done in related business areas. For example in the area of physical distribution, an architecture of business processes, goods flows and information flows was developed in which the links between physical consignments and the related information flows were implemented via standardised bar-coded shipment labels. An element of this architecture is the unique identification of transport units. EDIFICE worked with other bodies in the definition of an ISO/IEC standard for unique identification of transport units (known as the ‘license plate’) and is now authorised as Issuing Agency for License Plate prefixes. 

Drawing on work being done in UN/EDIFACT in the early nineties, EDIFICE developed a framework for the complete set of deliverables required to provide standards and guidelines on the implementation of inter-enterprise business processes using electronic messaging. This framework forms the basis for the EDIFICE Repository and includes specification of the business processes and scenarios as well as the information flows and message structures. 

With the rapid increase in use of the Internet and related technologies the EDIFICE forum proved its value as a place where information and experience could be exchanged on new and developing e-business techniques. Ways were sought of gaining the benefits of the new technologies while preserving the value of investments in existing standards and large numbers of EDI implementations. A guideline on sending EDI messages over the Internet was developed and some early experiments were done on converting EDIFACT EDI messages to XML. 

Many of the companies in EDIFICE also became members of RosettaNet, a consortium of companies in the IT, semiconductors and components industries, which was formed in the USA to create and implement industry-wide, open e-business process standards. EDIFICE has played a significant role in the adoption of RosettaNet standards in Europe. EDIFICE became the European RosettaNet User Group. 

In addition to RosettaNet, EDIFICE has maintained a wide network of liaisons and contacts with other associations. Within the industry sector these include ESIA, JEITA, and EDIMAN. With other industry sectors contacts include SWIFT, CEFIC, ODETTE and IATA. Among the formal standardisation bodies EDIFICE contacts include ANSI, CEN, ISO/IEC, NEN, OAGi, UN/CEFACT and the cross-industry ebXML initiative. 

The forum format has proved flexible and adaptable. EDIFICE has an absolute minimum of its own resources. The work on deliverables is primarily undertaken by people from member companies in EDIFICE task groups, with infrastructure support available from the EDIFICE Secretariat as required. Task groups are chartered by the Plenary meeting of members, and may be initiated on any areas of work within the overall scope of EDIFICE. This approach enables work to be focused on issues that are of actual importance to member companies and where they are willing to provide the resources. 

Whereas in early years much effort was devoted to the technicalities of EDI, more recently the Plenary meetings have taken the form of conferences around a particular theme related to e-business with presentations by invited experts.

See the list of Past Plenaries